Qualla: HMS Nabaron

HMS Nabaron: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Royal Navy gave it a ship's name even though it never went to sea. HMS Nabaron was a stretch of coral and palm trees on Ponam Island, a speck of land north of Manus in the Admiralty group, where the US Navy had scraped a 5,000-foot runway into the reef and then, in early 1945, handed the keys to the British. For nine months in the last year of the Pacific War, the Fleet Air Arm borrowed this island from its allies and called it a ship. The fiction was not just bureaucratic. Under the Naval Discipline Act, a shore station had to be a commissioned vessel to enforce Royal Navy rules, so a stretch of reef two degrees south of the equator became, on paper, a warship.

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HMS Nabaron: A Ship That Never Moved

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The personnel and gear for Mobile Operational Naval Air Base IV began assembling at RNAS Ludham in Norfolk on 15 November 1944, half a world away from the reef where they would end up. HMS Nabaron was designed as a Type A (Small) MONAB, capable of supporting up to 50 aircraft. Th...

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HMS Nabaron: The Aircraft on the Strip

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The planes that came and went from Ponam were a catalogue of Allied Pacific aviation. Vought Corsairs with their bent gull wings operated from the American strip for British squadrons. Grumman Hellcats and Avengers lent their bulk to carrier deck-qualifying practice. Fairey Firef...

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HMS Nabaron: V-J Day on the Reef

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The announcement of Japan's surrender reached Ponam on 14 August 1945, and the men commemorated it the day after. Whatever celebrations took place, the paperwork began almost immediately. Captain A.N.C. Bingley, the station's founding commander, had been declared unfit for duty; ...

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HMS Nabaron: Home by Christmas

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

HMS Unicorn reached Sydney on 6 November, and that arrival dissolved MONAB IV. On 9 November, the men of Nabaron boarded an escort carrier for the long voyage home to Britain, arriving in time for Christmas 1945. Most had been away for a year. Some had been away much longer. The ...

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